Ribose 5-phosphate: the key metabolite bridging the metabolisms of nucleotides and amino acids during stringent response in Escherichia coli?

Paulina Katarzyna Grucela, Tobias Fuhrer, Uwe Sauer, Yanjie Chao, Yong Everett Zhang

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Abstract

The bacterial stringent response and its effector alarmone guanosine penta- or tetra – phosphates (p)ppGpp are vital for bacterial tolerance and survival of various stresses in environments (including antibiotics) and host cells (virulence). (p)ppGpp does so by binding to its numerous target proteins and reprograming bacterial transcriptome to tune down the synthesis of nucleotides and rRNA/tRNA, and up-regulate amino acid biosynthesis genes. Recent identification of more novel (p)ppGpp direct binding proteins in Escherichia coli and their deep studies have unveiled unprecedented details of how (p)ppGpp coordinates the nucleotide and amino acid metabolic pathways upon stringent response; however, the mechanistic link between nucleotide and amino acid metabolisms remains still incompletely understood. Here we propose the metabolite ribose 5’-phosphate as the key link between nucleotide and amino acid metabolisms and a working model integrating both the transcriptional and metabolic effects of (p)ppGpp on E. coli physiological adaptation during the stringent response.
Original languageEnglish
JournalMicrobial Cell
Volume10
Issue number7
Pages (from-to)141-144
ISSN1475-2859
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

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